Social Acceptance of Indoor Delivery Robots in Office Buildings: Evidence from a Scenario-Based Visual Survey

Indoor delivery robots are entering office buildings, where their viability depends on acceptance by occupants who share corridors, gates and elevators. This study examines how physical–spatial, technical and socio-psychological factors relate to the social acceptance of an indoor robot delivery service in office buildings. In a scenario-based visual survey, 62 respondents rated short AI-generated animations contrasting robot behaviors in five office scenarios and evaluated technical and socio-psychological attributes. The largest differences between depicted conditions occurred in the security-gate and level-change scenarios, and close passing markedly lowered evaluations; respondents’ sensitivity to these differences was not associated with acceptance. Technical evaluations were strongly associated with socio-psychological evaluations and had a significant total association with acceptance, and socio-psychological evaluations were positively associated with acceptance at the 10% level. Mediation was not supported. A positive technical × socio-psychological interaction suggests that the association between technical evaluations and acceptance became more positive as socio-psychological evaluations increased, although none of the simple slopes was individually significant. The results suggest that respondents were sensitive to how robots handled building features and provide preliminary evidence for robot-friendly office design and service design.